Another headache for the ‘carbon-free’ crowd. When there’s less water in the dams, they have to crank up the power stations. Is a study needed to find this out?

When hydropower runs low in a drought, western states tend to ramp up power generation—and emissions—from fossil fuels, says Phys.org.

According to a new study from Stanford University, droughts caused about 10 percent of the average annual carbon dioxide emissions from power generation in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington between 2001 and 2015.

It looks like the EU is aiming to limit the supply of non-electric vehicles in order to reach an arbitrary ‘climate target’. What, if anything, this might mean for imports is not clear but their own manufacturers are not happy, for obvious reasons.

European Union members and the European Parliament on Monday agreed to slash carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 37.5 percent by 2030, the European Commission announced.

The announcement comes two days after the end of the COP24 summit in Poland where one of the largest disappointments for countries of all wealths and sizes was the lack of ambition to reduce emissions shown in the final text, says Phys.org.

When folk are told they need to pay ever-rising ‘carbon’ taxes, based on guesswork, to somehow control the climate, many aren’t impressed and may take their discontent to the streets.
H/T The GWPF

Seek out the most basic cause of the French riots and you’ll come to a bizarre answer: carbon dioxide.

More specifically, the demonization by political activists of that vital element of the earth’s atmosphere. French President Emmanuel Macron stirred popular rage by trying to raise the gasoline tax by about 25 cents a gallon.

Buying electric cars, solar panels and the like isn’t going to make much of a dent in the ’emissions’ California likes to fret about, as long as current forestry practices – or lack of them – are allowed to continue.

According to data analyzed by the US Geological Survey (USGS), the 2018 wildfire season in California is estimated to have released emissions equivalent to roughly 68 million tons of carbon dioxide, reports Green Car Congress.

This number equates to about 15% of all California emissions, and it is on par with the annual emissions produced by generating enough electricity to power the entire state for a year.

Strong resistance to paying any more for climate-related ideology through vehicle fuel bills continues in France. As the President suggested, many people are more interested in the end of the month rather than the (alleged threat of) end of the world. Trace gases are not a big deal to much of the public, it seems. Making ends meet is the top priority.

This is the third weekend of ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Macron’s controversial fuel tax, reports BBC News.

Protesters have scaled the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, as clashes with riot police continue during a third weekend of “yellow vest” rallies.

H/T The GWPF.France has rebelled; will it soon be Ireland’s turn? The EU-backed pressure for taxing the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, with heavy penalties for anyone who fails to do so, is causing convulsions in various quarters.

The Irish Farmers’ Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Supplier Association (ICMSA) have hit out at the possibility of carbon taxes being introduced to curb greenhouse gas emissions, reports The Irish Independent.

The farm organisations’ comments follow warnings from Richard Bruton, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, that Ireland is “far off course” in achieving its CO2 reduction targets.

Precision measurements show that sub-glacial volcanoes have been greatly underestimated as an ongoing source of carbon dioxide emissions. When will they re-do the calculations?
H/T Warwick Hughes

Recent research suggests the volume of volcanic CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere is far greater than previously thought, challenging man-made warming, says ClimateChangeDispatch.

The cornerstone principle of the global warming theory, anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is built on the premise that significant increases of modern era human-induced CO2 emissions have acted to unnaturally warm Earth’s atmosphere.

Another case of ‘do as we say, not as we do’ as UN globe-trotting by fuel-powered machines takes precedence over its claims that there’s a serious problem with man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Not so serious that they can’t ignore it whenever it suits them to do so, which seems to be most of the time judging by this report.

The head of the UN body that leads on sustainability and green issues has been criticised for extensive and expensive air travel, reports BBC News.

A draft internal audit, obtained by the Guardian and seen by the BBC, says that Erik Solheim’s actions risked the reputation of UN Environment.

The report says he incurred costs of $488,518 (£373,557) while travelling for 529 out of 668 days.

Whether wood is truly renewable or not is a matter of opinion. Trees can be burnt in minutes but regrowth obviously takes many years. Theory has it that new trees can over time recover the carbon dioxide from tree burning but how realistic is that? Not very much, according to experts. The same politicians who attend climate conferences proclaiming ’emissions’ are a terrible problem now actively support making them worse. You couldn’t make it up.

Europe’s decision to promote the use of wood as a “renewable fuel” will likely greatly increase Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and cause severe harm to the world’s forests, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications.

European officials on final language for a renewable energy directive earlier this summer that will almost double Europe’s use of renewable energy by 2030.

Against the advice of 800 scientists, the directive now treats wood as a low-carbon fuel, reports Phys.org, meaning that whole trees or large portions of trees can be cut down deliberately to burn.

Researchers describe this as ‘a major challenge to our current understanding’. The global carbon cycle model may have to be revisited.

More than 100 oceanic floats are now diving and drifting in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica during the peak of winter, reports Phys.org.

These instruments are gathering data from a place and season that remains very poorly studied, despite its important role in regulating the global climate.

A new study from the University of Washington, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Princeton University and several other oceanographic institutions uses data gathered by the floating drones over past winters to learn how much carbon dioxide is transferred by the surrounding seas.

Results show that in winter the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide than previously believed.

Gerald Marsh, retired Argonne National Laboratories Physicist, challenges the usual assumption that ice age cycles are initiated by Milankovich Cycles and driven by the Arrhenius effect of carbon dioxide. He says that the key variable here is “low altitude cloud cover” driven by cosmic rays. A paper worth reading.

ABSTRACT

The existing understanding of interglacial periods is that they
are initiated by Milankovitch cycles enhanced by rising atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentrations. During interglacials, global temperature is
also believed to be primarily controlled by carbon dioxide concentrations,
modulated by internal processes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Recent work challenges the
fundamental basis of these conceptions.

INTRODUCTION The history of the role of carbon dioxide in climate begins with the work of Tyndall 1861 and later in 1896 by Arrhenius. The concept that carbon dioxide controlled climate fell into disfavor for a variety of reasons until…

New York expects to change its future weather by installing lots of expensive mega-batteries, according to the Governor. But is fear of a harmless trace gas essential to life more like superstition than science?

.
Since climate scares were first sponsored by governments, neither the theory of man-made causality nor the evidence for it have improved. Models have failed to predict what actually happened. Time’s almost up for alarmists.

It was just 30 years ago this week that James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during a prolonged heat wave, which” he described as a climate event of cosmic significance.” Just to be sure he arranged for the meeting room to be warmer than usual. He expressed to the senators “his high degree of confidence” in “cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

There was an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and it ignited a world wide panic that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. So 30 years on we can pause and take a look at just how well his predictions have turned out, and check on how we are doing.

GWPF carry the story of a letter recently sent to the president of the Geological Society by a group of concerned current and former members:

The President Geological Society of London

Dear President

We are writing as a group of concerned primarily geoscientists, half of whom are or were Fellows, (names and affiliations listed below). Our concern is that the Society’s position on Climate Change (aka Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW), is outdated and one-sided, and is distracting attention and funding from real issues of pollution such as plastic and other noxious industrial and domestic waste. To address this, we proposed to Colin Summerhayes that the 2010 and 2013 GSL Position Papers be posted on the Energy Matters blog, so that all sides of the discussion could be aired; and we are very grateful to Colin for effecting and taking part in this (http://euanmearns.com/the-geological-society-of-londons-statement-on-climate-change/). In…

The author poses what he calls the ‘major question’: why does CO2 have no significant effect on temperatures in the real world?
(See also this Press Release).

The major development in climate science in the last year or two is something almost no one talks about, says Alan Carlin – strong evidence that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have no significant effect on global temperatures in the real world over recent decades.

The studies involved conclude that the minor increases in global temperatures during this period can be entirely explained using natural factors.